It is the second day of new consultations on changes to the Election Law under the baton of Office of the High Representative.
After SDP, People and Justice and SBB, it was the turn of Our Party. Although speculations have started again that Christian Schmidt will impose another decision on amendments to the law, and that in the part related to the functionality of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, there is no confirmation from the OHR.
While the HDZ calls on the high representative to finish the job as soon as possible, the SDA writes to the foreigners asking that such a scenario be prevented.
Integrity of the electoral process and functionality of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to the officials of Our Party who were at the consultation, these were the main topics yesterday.
Damir Arnaut and Edin Forto say that the OHR is going against the will of the Constitutional Court of BiH for the first time, and that the story of deepening ethnic divisions is being pushed, which Our Party expressly opposes.
“We expressed our position to stop talking about the further ethnicization of political life in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but we also emphasized that we believe that it would be really necessary for the OHR and the international community to turn their attention to the biggest problem of this country, which is corruption,” Arnaut said.
“Of course an agreement is possible. What is being offered and talked about today is the result of HDZ’s ten-year international campaign. And now you have a high-ranking official who says that HDZ is an extreme party and they are in the strongest coalition after Dayton,” Forto adds.
The President of Our Party talks about the move of Bisera Turkovic, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who wrote to several addresses abroad. She addressed the G7 countries and members of the Peace Implementation Council as well as the US Secretary of State. She said that, if the high representative imposes changes in favor of HDZ, as she stated, discrimination against minorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina would be cemented.
Finance Minister Vjekoslav Bevanda also sent a letter to the same address, who assessed Turkovic’s move as an abuse of the state institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“This electoral reform proposal gained momentum in some European capitals thanks to the strong lobbying of the Croatian government, where the HDZ is also in power, which threatens to force the Office of the High Representative in BiH to adopt a highly contested electoral reform proposal,” Turkovic stated in the letter. .
“We read with disbelief the private views expressed in the letter signed on the letterhead of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Unfortunately, it is evident that the position has been abused in the grossest possible way and that these purely personal observations of Minister Turković undoubtedly correspond with the views of the extreme right-wing Bosnian Islamic party SDA,” Bevanda wrote.
Elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina are held on October 2, and given that High Representative Schmidt is calling for consultations again, it is speculated that he could impose another decision by mid-September. There is no confirmation of those allegations in the OHR for now.
